


while(π<ℂ)

by kusuriurikun



Series: Shibuya Continuum [10]
Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: (we all know Sho doesn't stay dead but giving the warnings), Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Math and Science Metaphors, Mathematics, Near Death, Readers are forewarned I let Sho say "fuck", Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28176252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusuriurikun/pseuds/kusuriurikun
Summary: Occasionally, even the best of mathematicians runs into an incalculable function, something undefinable in their particular system of algebra.And Sho Minamimoto is about to discover quite the Venn diagram of incalculable functions with himself at the center overlap.CW for blood and near-death imagery.
Relationships: Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya & Minamimoto Sho
Series: Shibuya Continuum [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902298
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

Through the snow that increasingly fills his vision he sees the Composer, finally sees his quarry.

Sho’s been less riding the Taboo at this point, and more having it ride _him_. Where he’d formerly have calculated his desired solution, and planned an escape function...this time, it’s much more of brute force.

The white noise in his head (and the black Noise in his soul) won’t allow him that particular luxury anymore. He’s now in a bounding box of time as well as in space.

He knows if he can’t replace the variable of the Composer and soon, his own program is liable to be corrupted to the point of...well, being random noise. The Taboo will ride him completely, and calculations will no longer be possible in the limited memory-space not filled by static.

He knows he can fix this though. If he can just

If he can _just_

**Ḭ̸͑͆͛͛̉̅͝f̸̢͍͈̟͕͎̹͆̎̀̿̊͜ ̸̥͎̝͉͕̪̰̠̑͒̅̍̄̇̐͑͐͐h̷͉̀͑̂̇e̴̙̤͇̱̾̂̾͜͝ ̷̛̼͓̄̿́̆͆c̴̢̤͙̮̮̖̮͋̑̈́̈͜͜ả̵̡̮͍̹͕n̵̡̛͙͔͚̟̗̜̙̊̂̀ ̶̡̫̦̥́͋̈́͊͂͝j̸̨̢̳̱̟̣̖͇̍̂̋̆̀͜u̴̡̨̲̩̖͓̾͒̓͆̏̚͝ś̴̡̤̠̜̲̩t̸̨̘̪̟̹͖͎͔͙͗**

**just...** bring the Fractal Bastard _down_ and end him it’ll be alright. 

Sho knows he can fix this. It’s a matter of rewriting code. He’s worked on reverse engineering it when the white noise in his vision and the hornet’s nest in his head and the fire-numbness-fire in his skin and the occasional whiff of acrid dust and the bitterness on his tongue and the constant 50-hertz whine in his ears lets up.

(Which is less and less now. The function of time is rapidly approaching zero. The senses have even been blending together as of late; ringing in the ears sets off the technicolour confetti in his vision sets off a blast of sour-bitter-bile in his mouth sets off the desperate biting. Sometimes he feels the biting in his whole body; sometimes not at all.)

He growls, and the phase shift happens (though at this point he’s no longer sure if it’s physical or mental or a little bit of both, or if he and Leo Cantus are even _separate_ or more of a merged matrix function), and the Lion goes to hunt the Lamb one last time even as a small part of Sho Minamimoto (that he is relatively sure is _solely_ in that set) prays to whatever kami may be listening that this is not the time he loses himself forever in the feedback.

* * *

Sho is very much his Beast now, and he snarls, kicks, _rages_ at the Composer who is simply jumping away. Toying with the lion, which only manages to make Sho even _more_ furious.

It’s as if Joshua is batting away an annoying kitten while hardly putting in any _effort_ at fighting.

This only serves to fuel the anger on Sho’s end, who is becoming ever more frustrated with not actually being able to land a single blow--barely catching a pants leg at one point before a blast of light, or a wayward coffee machine, or something ELSE has to be ducked.

After a few minutes of this dance, both partners in this dance have tired of this particular rhythm, and decide it’s time for the finale.

The creature made of rage and Taboo that is Sho Minamimoto and Leo Cantus and both and neither runs and leaps, going right for Joshua Kiryu’s throat. The Lion rushes to devour the Lamb.

The Fractal Bastard dissolves--for the briefest of periods--into _light itself_ , such that it can’t be perceived fully--not just because of its brightness, but that the light itself seems to be refracting in ways it should simply not _bend_ , as if through some sort of gravitational lensing that simply shows unfocusable _light_ in the vague shape of a thirty-something man where a smug fifteen-year-old stood before.

The sight is enough to literally shock Sho out of the phase shift altogether. Where a leonine being (or at least the _appearance_ thereof) made of Noise and rage stood not even a femtosecond before, there is a very confused (if rather feline-looking and heavily tattooed with Taboo) young man sent sprawling on all fours, staring uncomprehending.

The figure made of unfocusable light somehow _smiles_ despite the fact it should not have a body--much less a _mouth_. 

Makes what might have been a gesture if you could see it from the light and the strangeness of a multidimensional shadow inserting its entire form into 3D+1 space.

Sho stares dumbfounded at this impossibility before him. Fascinated, and horrified, and being for one of the few times in his life being unable to grasp just _what_ he’s seeing in the form of the unbound Composer.

Sho does not even notice the Daihatsu compact or the vending machine until they fall on him, knock the wind out, trap him, _crunch_ him as he’s added to--no, is the actual _foundation_ of--his own last heap.

( _For the world is garbage, and he is garbage, as it has always been and always will be until the end of days. Amen._ ) 

The figure made of unfocusable light fades back into the Fractal Bastard in a vision every bit as impossible as seeing a tesseract fold in on itself to a simple cube.

And for a short time--maybe about three seconds and a little more--Joshua Kiryu almost looks like he’s staring in a bit of pity before he walks away from the pile of garbage he’s buried Sho under, almost as a parody of the Grim Heaper’s own modern art.

* * *

Sho barely notices the Composer’s farewell.

He’s too busy trying to take ragged breaths and feeling his own ribs stab him every time he inhales.

He can taste his own blood, like in that horrible nightmare he had two nights ago, the last time he slept. Like when he’s bitten himself too hard the past day because he couldn’t feel it.

He feels everything now. Feels everything on a fractal level, an _exponential_ level, if that were possible. Every iteration of his breath, every repetition of the increasingly desperate sine wave of his chest’s movement and its increasingly erratic oscillation cycle, brings forth sensations of pain he didn’t know to be possible.

After a particularly bad cycle where everything goes to red, the sine wave of his breathing shallows. 

Sho Minamimoto realizes he wants to do nothing more than sleep.

He’s going to be sleeping for a _zetta_ long time, he thinks. Sleeping in the _forever_ bounding-box where the timeline goes to infinity. 

He laughs bitterly. 

Immediately regrets the decision to laugh as he descends into an explosion of pain and his chest finally refuses to cooperate as his ribs puncture his lungs.

Breathing isn’t even working anymore.

The Taboo Problem isn’t going to be much of one soon.

Sleep would be good, Sho thinks. He’s tired. So _zetta fucking tired._

He gasps, and coughs blood, and he passes out for a while, and does not open his eyes again for a long while. When he does, all he can see is pinpricks.

He does not know if the Taboo has finally claimed him fully or if he’s dying, and he’s not sure there’s much of a differentiator in the end.

He wonders idly if it’s possible to have a part of yourself remain as a strange attractor when what you are has dissolved into the sea of infinite numbers.

He doesn’t think any Buddha’s coming for him to pull him out of his heap. The likelihood of this is...infinitesimal.

He hopes that soulstuff does get formed into new things and that there will be a new iteration for him.

But now Sho Minamimoto is tired, and he wants nothing more than to rest.

He closes his eyes.

He does not open them again.

And for a period even he can't say (does the vector _t_ even have a meaning here in the continuum?) he is adrift once again.


	2. Appendix: Author's notes and terminology

The particular title--and specifically that weird-ass “C”...ℂ is the sign for “the set of all complex numbers”, and it also makes for a bit of a fun numerical pun for the Composer.

Japan is unusual in that--while everything is around 110/120v AC--the actual frequency of the AC current does vary depending on WHERE you are. Tokyo (including Shibuya) would be around 50Hz, hence the specific frequency callout.

And yes, considering the obvious religious imagery...I couldn't resist just a _bit_ of lion-and-lamb commentary.

* * *

At the time I wrote this (particularly around early November), I felt the weight of the world was crushing me under a metaphorical heap, particularly the fact this year is increasingly a trash-heap that is on fire; pretty much the perfect time to, well, write a final and ultimately doomed battle.

(I'll assure the reader that I'm thankfully feeling _much_ better, and the panic/depression/etc. is out of the system for the most part. Not gonna lie though; for a while it was bad.)

Apparently I’m only capable of writing Joshua at _all_ when he’s full-on Eldritch Abomination, lol. (Which probably should make me question myself and my own sanity at times, but…) I guess this means I’ve now written all of the Unholy Trio at some point? :D

I’ll be honest in that the Shibuya Continuum series is... _not_ always the happiest of fanfiction series (especially not at THIS point) but...well...not every story is happy. And that’s okay. (And I do have a verse I write in where I DO try to give at least _one_ iteration of Sho a happy ending of sorts. You should be seeing more of that soon.)

(And besides, we know he’s not _dead_ dead. Final Remix and NEO:TWEWY have confirmed there is still more story yet to tell. Quite a bit, actually.)

As for my plans re this particular series? There's one more story I have here, and...one bit of poetry, and one bit (very much in the extremely early stages) that I'd put as...a potential bridge between "effectively FR" and "effectively the beginnings of NEO", but...to be honest, most of the stuff that touches on NEO:TWEWY is probably going to wait until its release for a number of practical reasons--not the least being I do want to see more, and there's an anime adaptation that's probably going to add some (minor) new lore, and I do want to do some more on Learning Curve...

(I'll be honest in that I expect NEO to end up making me a liar on the _next_ fic I do in this verse--that said, I'm doing the _exact opposite_ of complaint. The announcement on the 23rd November, and seeing Sho Minamimoto was not only back but--a player, and _actually arguably showing borderline protectiveness towards the new Hachiko Kids!_ \--had me weeping SO many happy manly tears. I'm _still_ kind of pinching myself and realizing this is not a dream or a fantasy!)


End file.
